GO TO THE GYM. IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER.
By Liz Smith

Tonight I met for pulled pork on greens with my gym buddy, Owen, at Memphis Blues BBQ house on Commercial Drive. We were there to say goodbye and good luck. After a couple of good months as gym buddies, Owen is moving to Winnipeg where he’ll be doing a Master’s Degree and fighting off minus forty below weather—while I’ll still be here in Vancouver wading through puddles and trying to keep up the momentum of going, at least three days a week, to the gym.
It’s going to be hard going for the first little while without Owen. Owen is that perfect gay boyfriend every girl secretly (or not so secretly) longs for. He’s a freedom fighter, a snappy dresser, a supportive listener, and, dare I say it, an irreplaceable gym buddy. Whatever you want to throw yourself into, Owen’s up for it. You want to work your hams? Owen will work his hams. And he’s not going to talk your ear off while he works them either. Owen is that special combination of willing, eager, and focused, that means you can get in and out of the gym in under an hour-and-a-half and still feel like you’ve been kicked in the quads the next day. And he’s reliable. If Owen says he’s going to be there at ten o’clock, he’s going to be there at ten o’clock. Which means you had better be there too.

Oh, Owen. How I will miss you! You make me a better me.
Or do you?

I’ve noticed lately—like, since Christmas, actually— that it’s been easier and easier to convince myself not to go to the gym. And I don’t know how much of this reticence has to do with the departure of my dear soon-to-be-Winnipegger buddy. There are a few other factors at play here. Shall I list ten?

1: I have a new job. (New!)
2: I am working many more hours a week than I ever have before. (Stress!)
3: I have a new book coming out in two weeks. (Stress!)
4: My trainer went on holiday. (This means I get a holiday, right?)
5: My gym buddy is moving to Winnipeg (Sob!)
6: Sometimes I go out of town for weeks at a time. (Traveling!)
7: There are new treadmills at the gym. (Weird!)
8: It’s the rainy season. (Soaked!)
9: My new down comforter is really really comfy. (Lazy!)
10: There is an entire season of Lost I haven’t seen yet. (Entertaining!)

Add any of these fine reasons du jour to my not-so-recent discovery of the gelato place up the road—by the rod of Zeus, WHY?— and you’ve got yourself a recipe for an Oprah-sized regression. Good thing I held onto all those big free velour pants I scored at Lotus Wear last summer.

This is the part where I cry a little.
No, really. I’m crying a little.

So here’s my question. How am I supposed to keep going to the gym when my life keeps getting in the way? Seriously. If Oprah—one of the richest, most influential woman in the western world—can’t keep it together, how the hell am I supposed to do it? What will I do when something really big happens? Like, what if Meghan moves? Or I move? In fact, these eventualities are little things, so far as I can tell. I don’t even want to think about what “really big” might actually look like. I mean, no matter how hard I try to keep to my routines, life just keeps coming at me. Who wants to go to the gym? Sometimes it is just so much easier to stay home, eat take-out Thai food, and drink (gasp!) beer.

When I talk to Meghan about these fears—and, more importantly, these behaviours—she tells me I already know what to do. She’s right, of course. Damn her. I know how to eat well and drink water. I know how to respect my body by moving it every day. I know how to live day-by-day so that I never feel like my life is one giant mountain of work I’ll never, ever, be able to climb…and I know how to do this because I am a writer and no one knows better than a writer how projects accrue.

When I had my first session with Meghan, I couldn’t put my legs at a right angle against a wall, hold myself in the plank position for thirty seconds, or do ten pushups from my knees. I could not squat. Meghan had to show me how to jump on the spot “like Tigger,” she said, which I couldn’t do—which is to say I couldn’t jump up and down, couldn’t jump up and then land without toppling over. I like to recall these moments when I am squatting my way across the length of the gym, holding a ten-pound medicine ball in front of me like a steering wheel; when I am on my third set of full pushups from an incline; or finishing up forty-five minutes of cardio. In my world, these were unheard of feats of strength and endurance. And, while I won’t ever say this kind of exercise is easy, it is satisfying. And, here’s the thing, I always feel better afterwards. I am less grouchy, more amorous, my periods are easier to deal with, clothes fit me better, my skin is brighter, I have more energy and less pain. So why is all this so hard to remember?

Here’s the hard truth. Staying fit isn’t easy. It’s hard.
It gets easier, but it’s always hard.

You know what’s easy? It is easy to forget to take care of your body, especially when you have many responsibilities calling upon you at every moment. And it is easy to lose ground. Before Christmas, I was running for eleven minutes at a stretch. Now, I’m hard-pressed to do four. It’s hard to see progress, and then watch than progress waddle out the door. I’ve gained back at least ten pounds of the thirty-five I’d lost before Christmas. The other day. Meghan made me do squats while holding a thirty-pound weight. Dude, it was heavy. I can’t carry that around any more. It’s just too much work. I mean, I don’t want walking to the bus stop to be work. Maybe I can get some kind of weird psychology going on where I convince myself that going to the gym is actually less work than not going to the gym because if I gain a bunch of weight I’ll just have to lug all that weight around with me wherever I go...

…wait a minute, that’s not weird psychology. That’s the truth.

Oh, man. I am not into motivational decor, but I am thinking of getting a brass plaque made for my wall above my desk where I work (the place where I am most likely to get stuck for eight hours and forget to move my body). You might like to get one made for yourself. It doesn’t matter what font you choose—though I am fond of Garamond—but it should say: GO TO THE GYM. IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER.